


Ruby Slippers

by rachel2205



Category: Hannibal (TV), The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachel2205/pseuds/rachel2205
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no place like home.</p>
<p>And never will be again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruby Slippers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a totally weird little thing that popped into my head. I have never written for this fandom before, but I saw [this](http://willstrayham.tumblr.com/post/53844598960/i-more-give-me-more-give-me-more) post and instantly imagined a dark _Wizard of Oz_ AU where Abigail is Dorothy just trying to get home (though we know she never will) and Hannibal is the Tin Man - he looks human, but he has no heart. Will as the Cowardly Lion makes sense to me by the end of Season 1, because (until nearly the end of episode 13) he has come to doubt himself so entirely. I have put the cabin in [The Haunted Forest](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSmh0wvYJEY).

" _I'd - turn - back - if I were you_ ," read the lion carefully. Abigail expected Will to turn around then, as he'd done so many times before on their journey, and she'd have to coax him back. But instead he looked at the hand-painted sign on the outskirts of the forest and then straightened his shaggy shoulders. "We'd better keep going, if we want to get there before nightfall," he said. There was a pale gleam in his eyes that made the hair on the back of Abigail's neck stand on end.

"Where?" she said. There was a creeping dread in her stomach.

"You know where, Abigail," said the lion. He took her hand in his paw and stroked it for a moment. A bird cawed in the trees, and Abigail jumped. 

"Sorry," she said, with a nervous laugh, and as they walked she kept her hands clasped in front of her. She wished Toto was with her. But her little dog was long gone, lost years before on one of her father's hunting trips in this very wood.

It was harder to walk these forests with Will; he blundered more often than her father had, and she winced at each cracking twig. _Lightly, lightly_ , her father had said, his hand on her shoulder, breath in her ear. As they stalked. She remembered watching the shape of the deer between the trees, russet glimpses between the greener-brown of trunks and branches. Now she felt curiously, frighteningly, like prey, and her glittering slippers kept disappearing into the decaying leaves on the forest floor. Soon it was too dark to see their ruby gleam.

Abigail half-expected the cabin to smell of death. It didn't; or at least not the bitter fear-smell of blood (Nick Boyle, the surprise on his face and then the fear; the look in the deer's eyes as the bullet hit). It was earth and tanned hide and wood smoke. But Will wouldn't let her stay in the room below, with its comforting smells of work, the place where her father was a craftsman, not a killer, deft fingers on needle or knife. Instead he took her upstairs to where there were antlers ochred darker than her slippers. Abigail clasped her hands in front of her and listened to the throbbing pound of her heart. Will fingered one of the antlers, paw surprisingly delicate in its touch.

"Do you ever hunt?" asked Abigail, nervously, after the silence had stretched on and on. 

"I fish," he said, and she could imagine that, the lion lying lazily on the river bank, paw dipping into the water, sunlight dappling on his fur. It was a nice image, and it let her dare say, voice nervous-bright:

"It's the same thing, isn't it? One you stalk, the other you lure." She wanted him to know. She had thought telling Hannibal would be enough, that sharing her guilt would relieve her, but it hadn't. He had taken her sins from her soberly, like a confessor in black, and then held her in his tin arms. It had helped, for a while. But she sensed that there would be something purer, if Will could forgive her. He could put one furry paw on her forehead like a blessing, and her sins would be forgiven. 

But instead he looked at her and said:

"You killed Nick Boyle, and you helped your father kill all those girls. You lured them, you killed them - how many other people have you killed?" And his mouth was no longer a tender trembling thing but a jaw full of teeth, and his last words were a roar.

In terror Abigail clicked the heels of her slippers and wished for home, _click - click - click_ \- 

And found herself on the porch in Minnesota. There's no place like home, she thought, shaky with relief, in the brief moment before remembering this wasn't home any more, not at all. But where else could she go? She went inside, where she found the tin man waiting.


End file.
